Nightbitch
Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: December 6, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
21
Mixed:
30
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinOct 21, 2024
Adams is already a six-time Oscar nominee: it’s very possible that for this, she could finally nab one outright. From out of its sitcom-neat package, Nightbitch unleashes something primeval and wild – thought it might seem cuddly, hot spit flecks its jaws. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyMaureen Lee LenkerSep 8, 2024
It is piercingly honest, remarkably sardonic, and breathtakingly brave in the way it lays bare some of women's deepest struggles and truths. But it is not a film that is anti-motherhood. It celebrates it as well, in all of its primal, animalistic, savage contradictions and complexities. Read full review
80
Film ThreatJason DelgadoNov 14, 2024
Amy Adams delivers the knockout punch that will leave you floored by just how close it hits to home. Read full review
80
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 8, 2024
Resembling a bonkers marriage of “Young Tully” and “Teen Wolf,” and led by a ferociously naked and unafraid performance by its star, it’s an amusingly incisive howl of maternal pain, frustration, disappointment, resentment, and feral strength. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldDec 6, 2024
The film is an absolute triumph for Adams, who attacks her role like — yes, sorry — a dog with a bone. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 5, 2024
At its best, Nightbitch is many things at once: funny, unruly, bizarre, tender. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneDavid FearDec 6, 2024
There is a sense that it could have gone farther out and pushed even more boundaries, especially before tying everything back up with a “happy” ending that feels mostly but not quite completely earned. But there’s still a bark and a bite here in the way that its allowing a specific strain of too-often stifled female rage to really bloom. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshDec 6, 2024
What always rings loud and clear and true is the formidable Adams. When given a red-meat role of physicality and nuance — animalized, her eyes swinging between adoration and primitive fire — she can handle whatever Nightbitch needs to be at any given moment: light and funny, dark and stormy, feral and furious, and all combinations therein. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 4, 2024
There’s a danger in critiquing the movie you wish a director had made instead of the one they did, but in this case, Heller did make a horror film and then backed off from the horror aspects. Read full review
70
Little White LiesJourdain SearlesDec 4, 2024
Heller skillfully portrays the repeated routines of motherhood – breakfast, lunch, dinner, bath time, bedtime – as both meaningful and exhausting. Read full review
70
Little White LiesJourdain SearlesDec 4, 2024
Heller skillfully portrays the repeated routines of motherhood – breakfast, lunch, dinner, bath time, bedtime – as both meaningful and exhausting. Read full review
70
Screen RantGraeme GuttmannSep 11, 2024
It's one of Adams' best performances in a career full of them, messy and feral and unwiedly, just like Nightbitch itself. Read full review
70
LooperReuben BaronSep 9, 2024
Adams' great performance aside, Nightbitch is just a good but not great movie — and oddly enough, its biggest obstacle to greatness might be that it's not quite weird enough. Read full review
70
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 8, 2024
Sinking her teeth into Mother the way Mother herself might a bloody steak, Adams courageously embodies Mother’s exasperation, finding the comedy in every setback. Read full review
70
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 8, 2024
Marielle Heller’s fourth feature is a gently observant comedy-drama about the perils of motherhood that could use a little more bite. Read full review
70
ColliderRoss BonaimeSep 8, 2024
Adams and McNairy give two fantastic performances that showcase the confused, overwhelming situation that first-time parents find themselves in, and Heller juggles this fantastical high-concept idea with very real emotions and powerful statements. Read full review
67
Original-CinLiam LaceyJan 22, 2025
The film’s star Amy Adams balances relatable comedy with dramatic empathy. In practice though, Nightbitch fails to converge their talents, resulting in a film of interesting moments that drifts to a tepid conclusion. Read full review
67
IndieWireKatie RifeSep 8, 2024
Marielle Heller’s version of the story — Yoder is listed as a co-writer — could have taken the magical realist element out entirely, and the film would have played exactly the same. The body horror is downplayed to the point of being functionally nonexistent. Read full review
65
Paste MagazineNadira BegumOct 21, 2024
Perhaps the film works better as a run-of-the-mill horror comedy about a woman who regrets sacrificing her career to start a family, but as a so-called revolutionary take on motherhood, Nightbitch is stagnant and spends too much time chasing its own tail to an unsatisfying conclusion. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 3, 2024
Nightbitch positions itself as an edgy, body-horror film with shock-value imagery, and there’s no denying the validity of its premise that even in 2024, the sacrifices of motherhood are taken for granted and underexamined. Read full review
63
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiSep 9, 2024
Heller’s enjoyable film is not the cringe fest you walk in expecting it to be, even if the premise will be a hairy leap for some moviegoers. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeDec 16, 2024
Nightbitch would have worked better if it had been pushed further in either direction – as an intimate interrogation, or as a full-bore bestial freakout. This uneasy middle ground feels like a missed opportunity. Read full review
60
PolygonJesse HassengerDec 9, 2024
Nightbitch has an ample supply of sharp observations, but it retracts its claws too soon and too easily. Read full review
60
iChristina NewlandDec 6, 2024
When Heller is metaphorically exploring the potentially horrifying physical transformation of pregnancy and post-partum life – and the personal sacrifices of identity, career, and self that women face when they become mothers – Nightbitch has a lot of smart, real things to say. Read full review
60
We Got This CoveredMarco Vito OddoDec 6, 2024
A stay-at-home mother's slow descent into lycanthropy serves as a metaphor for maternal struggles in this uneven adaptation that never fully commits to its provocative premise, despite Amy Adams' raw and transformative performance. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithDec 5, 2024
The setup is fun to explore. But after establishing it, the movie essentially gets stuck delivering variations on the idea of Mother splitting into two selves, the domestic and the feral. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 5, 2024
Adams is a performer whose emotional transparency can make her characters seem unguarded and appealingly vulnerable, and the movie works as well as it does in great part because of her. Read full review
60
EmpireJohn NugentDec 4, 2024
Its wackier moments sometimes feel like they have more bark than bite, but as an uncommonly honest and authentic depiction of motherhood, Nightbitch will come as sharp relief to mums everywhere. Read full review
60
Time OutGeorgia EvansOct 21, 2024
While Nightbitch accurately depicts the mundanity of motherhood, you can’t help but wish it dug a little deeper into the devaluation of women once they become parents, rather than just holding a mirror. Read full review
60
NMENick LevineOct 10, 2024
Nightbitch makes plenty of very valid points about traditional gender roles and the oppressive nature of new parenthood. But it never fully sinks its teeth into a meaty premise; it’s briefly ferocious where it could have been completely feral. Read full review
60
TheWrapChase HutchinsonSep 9, 2024
It may not always come alive in the way Heller, or us, would entirely hope for, but one can still be glad “Nightbitch” exists, especially with Adams there to lead the way. In every facet of her performance, she paints a full portrait of a character herself figuring out who she now is. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 8, 2024
The movie goes in circles, constantly expounding on the same things. It has lots of insight, but little momentum. Then again, maybe that’s the idea. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 8, 2024
Adams is reason enough to see it anyway in a performance that gives us intimate access to her character’s fears and anxieties. Read full review
58
The PlaylistAnkit JhunjhunwalaSep 9, 2024
Nightbitch operates in too many modes at once, making a muddle of most of them. Read full review
50
IGNLena WilsonDec 6, 2024
Despite its ferocious source material and lead Amy Adams, Nightbitch is a bloodless tale of maternal doldrums with little payoff. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireDec 6, 2024
Being a mom is hard, a universal truism that "Nightbitch" explores in ways that are occasionally inspired but mostly blunt and banal. Read full review
50
ABC NewsPeter TraversDec 6, 2024
Amy Adams excels as a stay-at-home mom going so crazy in confinement that she turns into a feral dog in protest. It’s a daring idea until the script chickens out as a ferocious feminist fable and sinks into cotton-candy quicksand. Bummer Read full review
50
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaDec 6, 2024
Adams alone might make this worth a watch, just because it's always a treat to watch her worrk. Let's just hope she returns to better things after this, and soon. Read full review
50
Washington PostJen YamatoDec 5, 2024
It’s too bad that the premise hints at more of a horror twist than the movie actually delivers. Heller frequently interrupts a thin story with ambiguous dashes of magical realism that only serve to confuse. Read full review
50
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckDec 5, 2024
Somewhow Adams, who also produces here, makes these things seem, if not quite natural, then logical. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 3, 2024
At its best, Nightbitch offers a deeply honest, emotionally unsettling portrait of the darker side of parenting. Unfortunately, those moments are counterbalanced by a metaphorical story element that devolves into an exercise in campiness so tonally at variance with the core story as to create a dissonance many viewers won’t be able to overcome. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineMark HansonSep 12, 2024
It’s disappointing to see a film with such a weird premise as Nightbitch ease into an orthodox storytelling mode. Read full review
50
The Film StageC.J. PrinceSep 9, 2024
It’s a rich subject that Heller dives into without hesitation, including some of the thornier aspects, until a disappointing final act where she settles on basic end points for her ideas. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubNatalia KeoganOct 9, 2024
While Nightbitch certainly achieves relatability, it also presents a generic treatise on womanhood that reinforces more gendered conventions than it refutes. Read full review
40
The New YorkerRichard BrodyDec 16, 2024
Coming from such a probing director, the new work is a disappointment, and yet there’s something diagnostically very interesting about the movie’s failings. Read full review
40
The TimesKevin MaherDec 6, 2024
The movie treads narrative water for the entirety of its running time. Read full review
40
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyDec 6, 2024
When its conclusions end up so tidy and emotionally pat, you can’t but wonder what it’d be like if Nightbitch were actually allowed to run free. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 6, 2024
The dog transformation is somehow always Dr Jekyll, and her “nightbitch” persona frankly never becomes a very interesting metaphor for depression or midlife crisis. Yet there’s no doubting the sympathy and vehemence of Adams’s performance. Read full review
40
Total FilmEmily MurrayDec 5, 2024
Completely stripping the bold premise back, Nightbitch is one of the year's most disappointing releases, wasting the talents of the usually brilliant Amy Adams. This dark thriller is all bark and no bite. Read full review
40
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeDec 4, 2024
Adams, as usual, gives it her all, but it’s as if Kafka’s Metamorphosis had been adapted as frivolous comic operetta. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 9, 2024
It’s all smug pointing and nodding rather than anything smarter or more savage, its targets just and understandable – motherhood is hellish, husbands are thoughtless, wider society is misogynistic – but its overly didactic methods repetitive and ineffectual. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeDec 3, 2024
Nightbitch is a satire that needed to be more fearless and dangerous. Instead, its bark is far worse than its bite. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 18, 2024
Either “Nightbitch” shouldn’t have been made or its premise should have been transformed and built upon. Read full review
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